


Human

by ObsessiveOddball



Category: Digimon - All Media Types, Digimon Story Series | Digimon World Series, Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth
Genre: Angst, Complete, Digimon Cyber Sleuth - Freeform, Gen, Half cyber body, Headcanon, Identity, Identity confusion, NOW WITH AN EPILOGUE!, Oneshot, Reflection, Spoilers, Takumi Aiba isn’t as human as he seems, lots of headcannons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24935254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ObsessiveOddball/pseuds/ObsessiveOddball
Summary: Takumi Aiba is not as human as anyone thought.Or: Takumi realizes some things about having a half cyber body.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 55





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello hello! Man, it’s been ages since I posted anything, but I’ve been playing Digimon: Cyber Sleuth and got hit with the urge to make a fic about it. I haven’t completed the game yet, so some stuff may be wrong, but I really wanted to write some stuff for it.
> 
> The game hasn’t brought up much about Takumi’s half cyber body differing from just being human, so I decided to take a try at it. I love when characters have some stuff subtly off about them after all.
> 
> I know pretty much nothing about the Cyber Sleuth fandom or what headcannons already exist, so my apologies if this has been done before.

Takumi Aiba wasn’t human, not really.

It hadn’t quite sunken in yet. 

Oh yes, he looked human enough to pass. The avatar parts hiding away his broken form beneath a layer of borrowed humanity. He had been assured that it would be fine, that he was still himself.

After all he still ate,

(He never felt hungry)

And slept,

(Not for long)

And breathed,

(No he didn’t)

Just like a human did.

But there were other things. So many little things that perhaps no one else had even noticed.

———

The first evidence that he wasn’t human came with little fanfare.

One day, filing a report for Kyoko, he’d gotten a paper cut. 

He wouldn’t even have noticed if not for the blue light it gave off. The cut hadn’t hurt, not even a slight sting, but he hadn’t thought on that until later. No, he had focused on the small injury and what lay beneath. 

It wasn’t blood. Blood wasnt _blue_.

( _impossible movements colored with the sound of static and the death of numbers in his ears)_

Takumi Aiba bled data and broken code. 

_Takumi Aiba didn’t feel pain._

———

A week later, rain pattering against window panes and asphalt, he had come to another realization. 

It had been a routine trip out to the store, just his weekly errands for Kyoko. If he hadn’t been paying attention it wouldn’t have been anything more than usual, but focused as he was on the sounds made by falling rain, he heard it. His footsteps. 

It was never something he had paid much attention to, just a background noise of life, but… something was off. It took a moment to realize what it was.

The sound didn’t line up to his footfalls, not really. 

He paused, and sure enough the sound faded a few seconds off beat. It reminded him of a few of the games he used to play, how the character sounds wouldn’t always match up. He and his mom had made a game of picking out when it happened. It had always been a fun pastime, just the two of them on the couch laughing over the small things. 

Now that he had noticed it was all too obvious.

The sound was recorded, stored within the code he was formed from. 

It shouldn’t have been so strange. Of course he wouldn’t _really_ make a sound, his body wasn’t his real one after all. 

That didn’t help the unease wrapping around his heart every time he noticed an off beat step.

_(Sounds screaming like wrong calculations, bursting beneath skin that wasn’t his own)_

It wasn’t long before he found out how to turn off the sounds, quieting the code inside him. The silence was almost worse.

Takumi Aiba could walk into a room without any notice.

_Takumi Aiba couldn’t make a sound._

———

It was Saturday when he finally came to a revelation that had been hiding away in back corners of his mind. 

He’d been on an early morning run with Arata, both needing something to get their minds off all that was happening with the Eaters and everything else. It wasn’t long before it became a race, though it wasn’t like either one of them was super fit or anything. They were the type who spent days in front of computer screens, not using the gym. 

That was why it had come as such a surprise when Takumi easily outpaced Arata. He hadn’t thought Arata was _that_ out of shape, but by the time they made it to their goal Arata was completely out of breath.

Takumi wasn’t. 

He tried taking a breath, but there were no lungs to expand. 

_(Simulated oxygen broke down and shattered, blue as the smell of electricity and tin)_

Takumi Aiba hadn’t breathed in months.

_Takumi Aibi didn’t need to breathe._

———

When the building’s air conditioner began malfunctioning, Takumi discovered another unwanted truth.

Everyone he had spoken to in his investigation spoke of cold areas, even before it spread to the whole shopping center, but he hadn’t noticed anything odd. 

Even when Kyoko’s office became so cold that her horrific coffee could turn to ice, he felt nothing. Clad in a simple T-shirt, Takumi was the only one not shivering. 

The issue had been easy enough to sort out when it was discovered to simply be a digimon causing the air conditioning issues, but that didn’t explain away Takumi’s inability to feel the cold. 

He wrote it off as coincidence and moved on.

When the air conditioning broke again, this time set to a sweltering amount of heat, there was little denying it. Takumi felt just as comfortable as he had in the freezing cold.

People were at risk of heatstroke, and Takumi wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

_(The taste of hot days and frigid winters scattered only as ones and zeroes)_

Takumi Aiba could investigate in any weather.

_Takumi Aiba could not feel anything._

———

Takumi Aiba was many things, but he was not a human. Not anymore.

Flesh and blood had given way to code and numbers, and there was only so human that could look.

  
  


_Takumi Aiba wasn’t human._


	2. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He was not Takumi Aiba.
> 
> He didn’t know how he knew, but he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hey! I am back, having finally completed the game! Didn’t think I was going to add a second part to this, but the writing bug struck me, and so I must write! This one is really short, set at the end of Digimon: Cyber Slueth, so beware of spoilers.
> 
> Unrelated to this:  
> I cannot be the only one who finds it weird that Nokia is treating Rie potentially becoming Yuuko and Yuugo’s stepmother is a good thing in her ending narration about new Tokyo, right? It was stated that Rie was the one who wanted to murder their dad in the first place, *and* that Yuuko despised her. Is it just a case of Nokia’s usual ineptitude???

He was not Takumi Aiba.

He didn’t know how he knew, but he did. It was a certainty that had lodged in his brain, refusing to be dislodged or disproven. It weighed heavy on his thoughts, every time the others used that name. 

His memories held gaps, spaces where the data that had been gathered to recover Takumi’s mind didn’t quite fit quite right. He had forgotten names, faces, people he was certain had been important. He couldn’t remember his mother’s face… but no, that wasn’t quite right, she was  _ Takumi’s _ mother, not his. When she returned, he couldn’t even recognize her, not until all the context clues presented themselves. Even then, it wasn’t recognition, not really. He knew, as an outsider might, that this was Takumi Aiba’s mother, who he cared for very much. But… her face was that of a stranger.

Takumi’s friends from school, the girl and the boy who had been in the background of so many memories… their names were almost as impossible to recollect as their faces. There were fond memories, certainly, but in none of them could he truly remember.

The others thought it was just him adjusting to the new Tokyo, the new present with all its new abnormalities, but he knew it was more than that.

His clearest memories were of the time spent in his half cyber body, the time spent with his digimon partners and all the friends who had played a role in the creation of this new future. Everything else seemed patchy, broken up by large swaths of nothingness.

_ But _ , while he was not Takumi Aiba he was still, on a fundamental level,  _ human.  _ Yes, he was also mental data recovered from the digimon that had stayed by his side so very long, but he had also regained (or perhaps gained for the first time) all of those necessities, the little things that made one truly alive. 

The others— _ Yuuko, Arata, Nokia, even Yuugo _ — they needed him to be someone who didn’t exist anymore. He didn’t want to break it to them, not when they seemed so overjoyed by “Takumi’s” return. For now though, he could act the part, for their sakes. 

That care for his friends, that was something that would never waver, Takumi or not. He had, a few times, reflected that for all the original Takumi’s misgiving, that care was what made him human, more than a heartbeat or the sensation of pain.

* * *

Takumi Aiba was human, and always had been. 

_ The new Takumi Aiba would not forget that. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do leave a comment if you enjoyed reading this! I truly do appreciate them, even if it’s just some small thought. Comments keep me motivated, I love seeing people react to my writing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you’ve made it this far, a comment or kudos would be really appreciated.


End file.
